Tuesday, October 21, 2014

The Interview: Chris Farren

I met up with Chris Farren at NYU's Kimmel Center prior to his CMJ panel to talk about his first solo tour, Fake Problems, Antarctigo Vespucci, Lost, Frozen and more.

The Ruckus: Thanks for taking the time to speak with me! You just finished up your solo tour, how did that go?

Chris Farren: It was my first solo tour ever. It was a confidence builder for me because I was doing Fake Problems which is a loud rock band, so to have to strip everything back and have to rely on my voice and guitar, it was a challenge. It was something I was afraid of doing, even right before the tour. It was only eight or nine shows but after playing them I felt so much better about my ability to that do. I'll be doing another run in the UK starting in November (editor's note: that tour was booked by The Ruckus' very own Barlow!).

TR: And you’ll be touring with Antarctigo Vespucci again after doing a few shows earlier this year. How did that project come about?

CF: Last year, when Fake Problems went to record a new record, we used about eleven of maybe a hundred songs that I had written. It seemed that the Fake Problems stuff wouldn’t be coming out for a while and I wanted to make myself busy, so I flew to New York to meet up with Jeff from Bomb the Music Industry! to work on something. We didn’t expect people to like it as much as they did, so we were really happy with the reaction to it.

TR: Was the process of creating songs different in working with Jeff, especially since you were bringing all these songs to him?

CF: I came in with the song ideas and Jeff would deconstruct it and take the parts that he liked the most and we'd go from there.

TR: Do you usually have a lot of songs written or do you go through droughts where you aren't creating much?

CF: I always feel like I am in a songwriting drought because I’ll be writing and writing but not like what I have, but then I’ll write one song that I like and write another song that I like and it will give me confidence in what I’m doing.

TR: Not only are you performing at CMJ but you are also on one of the panels. Did you try to get on one or were you approached?

CF: Well I made a series of humorous tweets where I was joking about being on a CMJ panel and my friend Sean, who works for No Sleep Records out in California, he emailed me and was like “hey, I know Lisa who does the panels, would you actually want to do one?” and in my head I was like “no, no, no, just say no” but I’m trying to do this thing where I just say yes to everything since it opens up opportunities and experiences you would never have otherwise. So I said yes and she was like well who are you? So I tell her I’m in a band, I tweet a lot, I made a shirt, stuff like that. So then she lined up this one about social media.

TR: The shirt is so interesting because you basically created a meme and it exploded very quickly. Was that something you were thinking about for a while?

CF: I thought of the idea toward the end of last year. I thought it was stupid but decided to just do it. I made a super short run and figured I could sell them in two or three weeks, but they sold out that night I put them up. When I woke up the next morning, it was on the front page of Reddit.

TR: It’s not common to have an idea get so big like that so fast.

CF: It was never my intent for that to happen. I never thought I'd make make something go viral like that. It was very overwhelming at first even though it was all very good. Like nothing bad happened, but I was anxious about it for the first few weeks.

TR: The social media panel you are on is going to discuss brands and things like that, do you even think about your own social media presence like that?

CF: First and foremost, I’m trying to be a successful musician and things like twitter and instagram and tumblr are a good tool for that, but it’s mostly a way not to feel sad and lonely. You are talking to people who understand you or at least seem to understand you and it’s fun.

TR: The panel bills itself as featuring social media mavens, do you not see yourself like that?

CF: It would be very embarrassing if I did. I don’t think about it much. I just tweet whatever comes to my head. I am a super big fan of people in entertainment that have this whole world. Like if you listen to one episode of Comedy Bang Bang, you might be like what the hell is going on, but if you start listening to it over and over again you pick up on these things, this whole world building. Or like with Dan Harmon with Community too, I’ve always loved stuff like that. What I’ve learned from the things that I like is that you should be 1000% honest all the time and I try to talk about the things I like.

TR: So you have a podcast too.

CF: I do.

TR: I have to admit I’ve never seen Lost.

CF: Sometimes I wish I hadn’t. When we made the Antarctigo Verspucci record in February, we were sitting around and were like “let’s start a podcast!” I’ve always loved podcasts and sometimes listen to them more than I do other music. Jeff was like let’s just make a podcast about a TV show while you’re here, let’s binge watch an entire series, which turned into “let’s make a podcast about Lost.” We had watched it before, but me more than Jeff turned on it hard after the divisive season finale. I did not like it. So we decided to watch the whole thing, out of order, for no reason really. I think we wanted to see if the episodes could stand up on their own and some do and some don’t. But I’ve always wanted to do something like this and there is an endpoint, even if we won’t get there until next year, but it was just a fun thing to do.

TR: And you love Frozen.

CF: I love Frozen!

TR: How many times have you watched it so far?

CF: Seven or eight, which is a lot of times to watch a movie in a short time. I’ve definitely watched Frozen more than any other movie. I don’t know why I like it so much. I love musicals and I had heard about it and had heard parts of “Let It Go” but it never crossed my mind that I should watch it. One day, I was going to clean my room and I was like “let me pop in Frozen” and I didn’t clean my room, I just watched the whole thing. Frozen rocks, I like it a lot. Frozen is punk.

Chris will be performing Tuesday, October 21 (tonight!) at The Paper Box as part of No Sleep to CMJ. He will also be playing a few shows with Fake Problems before going on tour with Antarctigo Vespucci in November, followed by his solo shows in the UK.

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